'A guide to the cultural festivals, traditional culture, musical forms, dances, instruments, music education, government institutions concerned with music, and copyright mechanisms in Belize, the Bahamas, Jamaica, St. Kitts & Nevis, Antigua and Barbado, Montserrat, Dominica, St. Lucia, Barbados, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Grenada, Trinidad & Tobago, and Guyana'--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 58.http://www.loc.gov/hlas/

Product Description: In Haitians in Michigan, Michael Largey chronicles the challenges facing Haitian immigrants and their U.S.-born children as they seek to maintain their cultural identity in the United States. Beginning with a useful outline of Haitian political history, Largey explains how Haiti and the United States have become linked by a shared history of commerce and colonialism...read more

While the Haitian musical tradition is probably best known for the Vodou-inspired roots music that helped topple the two-generation Duvalier dictatorship, the nation’s troubled history of civil unrest and its tangled relationship with the United States is more intensely experienced through its art music, which combines French and German elements of classical music with Haiti's indigenous folk music. Vodou Nation examines art music by Haitian and African American composers who were inspired by Haiti’s history as a nation created by slave revolt. Around the time of the United States’s occupation of Haiti in 1915, African American composers began to incorporate Vodou-inspired musical idioms to showcase black artistry and protest white oppression. Together with Haitian musicians, these composers helped create what Michael Largey calls the “Vodou Nation,” an ideal vision of Haiti that championed its African-based culture as a bulwark against America’s imperialism. Highlighting the contributions of many Haitian and African American composers who wrote music that brought rhythms and melodies of the Vodou ceremony to local and international audiences, Vodou Nation sheds light on a black cosmopolitan musical tradition that was deeply rooted in Haitian culture and politics.